Pynchon, Lahiri Join Finalists for National Book Awards

"The Good Lord Bird," by James McBride. Source: Riverhead via Bloomberg

Oct. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Last night, Jhumpa Lahiri was among
the also-rans at the Man Booker Prize ceremony in London. Today
in New York she was given another chance at winning a major
prize as she was named one of five finalists for the National
Book Award in fiction.

Her novel, “The Lowland” (Knopf), tells the story of two
Indian brothers torn apart by politics.

Reclusive novelist Thomas Pynchon is a finalist for
“Bleeding Edge” (Penguin Press), a paranoid look at new
technology. Fortunately, he wouldn’t have to show up to win.

The other fiction nominees are Rachel Kushner’s “The
Flamethrowers” (Scribner), set in New York’s downtown art scene
in the mid-1970s; James McBride’s “The Good Lord Bird”
(Riverhead), a loose retelling of John Brown’s raid on Harpers
Ferry, which helped ignite the Civil War; and George Saunders’s
“Tenth of December” (Random House), a book of unconventional
short stories.

The nonfiction category includes two books of history
focusing on women: Jill Lepore’s “Book of Ages: The Life and
Opinions of Jane Franklin” (Knopf), about Benjamin Franklin’s
youngest sister, and Wendy Lower’s “Hitler’s Furies: German
Women in the Nazi Killing Fields” (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt).

Lawrence Wright’s nonfiction finalist, “Going Clear:
Scientology, Hollywood & the Prison of Belief” (Knopf),
includes the story of an earlier book whose author was sued 19
times by the Church of Scientology.

The other nonfiction finalists are George Packer’s “The
Unwinding: An Inner History of the New America” (Farrar, Straus
& Giroux) and Alan Taylor’s “The Internal Enemy: Slavery and
War in Virginia, 1772-1832” (Norton).

Winners receive a bronze statue and $10,000, while
finalists receive a medal and $1,000.

The winners will be announced on Nov. 20 in New York, at a
benefit for the National Book Foundation at Cipriani Wall
Street. Novelist E.L. Doctorow will receive the 2013 Medal for
Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.

The Literarian Award for Outstanding Service to the
American Literary Community will be given to poet and memoirist
Maya Angelou, who will be introduced by Nobel Prize-winning
novelist Toni Morrison.

Muse highlights include Manuela Hoelterhoff on TV and Farah
Nayeri on film.